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LOS ANGELES — It is better to be right than to be happy — at least for one husband on the
cutting edge of science.

As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to “agree with his wife’s every
opinion and request without complaint,” and to continue doing so “even if he believed the female
participant was wrong,” according to a report on the research that was published recently by the
British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and
stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand,
they had observed patients leading “unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather
than happy.” If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were
right, would greater happiness be the result?

Enter the intrepid husband. Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be
right, he was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women
would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was
suddenly so agreeable.

Both spouses were asked to rate their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the
happiest) at the start of the experiment and again on Day 6. It’s not clear how long the experiment
was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

“By then the male participant found the female participant to be increasingly critical of
everything he did,” the researchers reported. The husband couldn’t take it anymore, so he made his
wife a cup of tea and told her what had been going on.

That ended the study.

Over the 12 days, the husband’s quality of life plummeted from a score of 7 down to 3. The wife
started out at 8 and rose to 8.5 by Day 6. She had no desire to share her quality of life with the
researchers on Day 12, according to the report.

“It seems that being right, however, is a cause of happiness, and agreeing with what one
disagrees with is a cause of unhappiness,” they wrote.